Ask the Author Live: Malcolm Gladwell

This week in the magazine, Malcolm Gladwell writes about the similarities between dogfighting and football. Today, Gladwell answered readers’ questions in a live chat. A transcript of their discussion follows.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Hello everyone. The chat has begun!

QUESTION FROM DARSHAN: Violence has been a form of entertainment for a long time—going back to the the time of gladiators. Football is just a modified version of the gladiator fights. What do you have to say?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Well, if that’s our standard of comparison, why do we still watch football? Few of us would consider it morally acceptable to go to a gladiator fight or a dogfight. Many people I know have also turned on boxing. I would like to think our attitudes toward violent sports have evolved since Roman times.

QUESTION FROM EUGENE: The dogs don’t choose to participate in dog fights. Owners prey on the dog’s loyalty to stage the fight. Football players choose to play football. Even after their careers end due to injury, whether by brain injury or otherwise, football players say they would do it all over again. Can you comment? Thanks.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: This is the most common response I’ve gotten to the piece. I guess I would say that I think consent is a red herring. First, the players currently playing didn’t “consent” to getting dementia. We’re just finding out about this problem now. In any case, our social obligation to reduce the risk of any endeavor is independent of the question of consent. When I get into a car, I freely consent to the risks associated with driving. But that doesn’t relieve society of the obligation to make the roads as safe as possible.

QUESTION FROM SCOTT: To Darsham’s point. The violence draws us in, but societal pressures work to reduce the actual violence, or as your article suggest the appearance of actual violence. What will football look like in fifty years? Lots of pads, less contact, smaller players?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I have no idea. But I can’t imagine that it will resemble anything like the football we play today. For one thing, once the players alter the collective-bargaining agreement to allow for lawsuits against the league, the owners are going to pay attention to this issue in a hurry. If the game survives at all, I’m guessing radically changed line-play, no-contact practices, and perhaps pre-screening of potential players for genetic susceptibility to dementia.

QUESTION FROM DENNIS VAN STAALDUINEN: Fights in ice hockey are, of course, an even more gladiatorial (and controversial) example of modern bloodsport masked as normal mainstream athletic entertainment—to say nothing of wrestling, extreme fighting, etc. Isn’t football at the tamer end of the spectrum?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Good question. Well, hockey is different. What you have there is (I’m guessing) a higher risk of concussive brain trauma: that is, a greater number of really big hits to the head. But what hockey doesn’t have is the incredible number of sub-concussive impacts that football has—and the research seems to suggest that the latter is as dangerous (or more dangerous) than the former. I can also see how the head could be taken out of play in hockey in a way that I can’t quite see it taken out of play in football.

QUESTION FROM GINGER: Would football be safer if they added a dog to each team on both sides of the ball? Maybe stick a golden retriever in at wide receiver and a pitbull as a line backer in a 3-4 scheme.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Ladies and gentlemen, my readers…

QUESTION FROM JULIA: What makes football so enjoyable? Is part of it the violence of the hit? What if we ran an experiment to see if the exact same excitement would come from a flag football league. Say, overnight, the N.F.L. became a flag football league. With all the same trappings (TV, glitzy uniforms, etc.) would the same appeal be there? I believe it might. We’re attracted to the beauty of the athletic moves and the satisfaction of successful teamwork.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: It’s possible that you are more evolved than the average football fan.

QUESTION FROM RYAN: Whether society is obligated to make football a safer sport—can we all at least agree that soccer is a far more superior sport? That is all.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: As a Canadian, I am open to any and all America bashing.

QUESTION FROM PAUL MILO: I know people who won’t let their kids play football. While it’s obviously still very popular, do you think the sport may whither away somewhat for lack of players?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Absolutely. Listen. Everything we know about brain trauma says that the brains of young people—teenagers and below—are FAR more sensitive to injury than the brains of adults. We even know that there are a substantial number of concussions in Pop Warner football. What self-respecting parent would put their child in that kind of situation, once the dangers become well established?

QUESTION FROM ALEX S: I’m curious about some of the background that lead to the article. What moment of insight lead you to connect dogfighting and football? (Was it Vick?)

MALCOLM GLADWELL: It was Vick. From the moment that case broke, I found the way he was treated profoundly puzzling. I understood that dogfighting is a terrible thing. But I didn’t understand why it was more terrible than any number of other things that we do to animals and each other. The final straw was Roger Goodell’s moral grandstanding over whether to allow Vick back into the game. Please.

QUESTION FROM JOHN: Your article talks about the cumulative effect of lots of small impacts. Did you uncover any information from other contact sports beside boxing that might offer some insight? What about rugby (certainly lots of concussions, but perhaps fewer, less frequent sub-concussive events)? Hockey? Lacrosse? Soccer? Should we be as worried about kids that are playing those sports as the Pop Warner football kids?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I don’t think so. And intuitively I can’t see how a sport like soccer can possibly compare. But then again, we’ve really only studied boxing and football at this point. (And pro wrestling. But I hesitate to call that a sport).

QUESTION FROM KALEB: Bill Simmons would be proud for the “readers” line…

MALCOLM GLADWELL: That’s because I shamelessly stole it from him. As my friend Jacob once said, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then plagiarism is the sincerest form of imitation.

QUESTION FROM JONATHON: I am a high school football coach. What do you feel is our responsibility as coaches on the younger levels? More education as to the nature of brain injuries? Better technique?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: That is the hardest question of all. I honestly don’t know. Both you as a coach—and, as importantly, people like me, who are die-hard football fans—need to consider the possibility that the game is irretrievably harmful. It’s way too early to decide that yet. But I think we have to commit to following what the science tell us—even if it means walking away from a game we love.

QUESTION FROM MIKE MURPHY: Your article raised a lot of questions about the impact of football on players. Do you think the exorbitant salaries and the money to be made by ownership, agents, etc, will preclude any meaningful reform in the way the game is played?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Not if the reform impulse comes from the fans and the players. I really think its up to the people in the stands to make plain their concern over this issue—and be willing to admit that watching a violent sport is not a morally neutral act.

QUESTION FROM SB: Any circling of the N.F.L. wagons over these research findings, or is it too early to tell?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: My sense so far is that (understandably) they’ve been on the defense. But I think you also have to give them some credit. They started a concussion study ten years ago. They funded the University of Michigan survey. They are starting (slowly) to pay disability claims to players suffering from dementia, and they currently have a reasonably large study ongoing designed to look for evidence of mental disability in retired players. So they aren’t the tobacco industry.

QUESTION FROM RANDY: How will the N.F.L. balance the need to protect its marquee players (such as it has now with rules to protect QB’s and wide receivers) without making fans feel like the sport has been “watered down”?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I’m not sure you can’t! It’s up to the fans to understand that maybe its time we watched a watered down product. By the way, there ought to be some very simple steps that the N.F.L. could take in the interim, while it waits for a definitive answer on this question. We know that the extraordinary weight of linemen is increasing the impact of the hits. (remember your high school physics? Force equals mass times acceleration.) How about weight limits for lineman? Would it really hurt the game if we said that no one on the field could be over 250 pounds?

QUESTION FROM JAMES: There are a number of jobs out there that are going to cause a lot of health problems after years of doing them, bad backs, bad lungs, bad knees, etc. Professional football players at least make great money. And now they know they’re at a higher risk of dementia in later life—can’t we just say: play at your own risk?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Sure. But that’s why I came back—at the end of the article—to the idea that the moral responsibility here lies on the shoulders of the fans. Maybe—but only maybe—its ethical to pay someone a lot of money to do a job that carries a known and statistically significant risk of dementia. But is it ethical to watch those injuries being inflicted—for pure enjoyment’s sake? That’s where I get stuck…

QUESTION FROM MARK HENGEL: I know you are a sports fan. How have other sports fans taken your article’s point that football’s inherent violence requires greater regulation at the least and prohibition at the worst?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: No death threats as of yet. :-)

QUESTION FROM DAVID: To address the comments related to violence in sports, what does the increased popularity of extreme fighting say about our society today and where do we set the level of a spectator sport being too violent?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Football is like dogfighting. Extreme fighting is dogfighting.

QUESTION FROM EUGENE: Are we talking about making the game safe (so it’s not like dogfighting); or abolishing the game?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: i think that depends on the outcome of the research now going on. We need to know how many ex-players are suffering from CTE, and we need to know why. Suppose it turns out that ninety per cent of the risk is in lineman who play more than ten years in the N.F.L. Then its clear how we can address the problem without abandoning the game itself. But if the risk isn’t so clearly delineated? Then we have a problem.

QUESTION FROM QUAN: Malcolm, how much blame can we give to the team doctors that clear a player to play (especially so soon) after suffering a concussion? No doctor in his or her right mind would allow Tim Tebow to play two weeks after the concussion.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Here’s what I don’t understand. Why is the doctor working for the team? Can there be a more obvious conflict of interest? Wayne Crebet was sent back into a game after suffering a concussion—the latest in a long line—and he retired at the end of that season. And who sent him back in? The Jets team doctor. Oy.

QUESTION FROM FINLEY: Would you prevent your children from playing contact football—or at least recommend to other parents that they resist the temptation?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: My hope is that my children play chess. :-)

QUESTION FROM RICK: Hi Malcolm. Do you think there is any correlation between the off-field problems that some active players face today (violence, weapons charges etc) with the mild onset of dementia or other effects of trauma from playing contact sports?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Great question. Dr. Cantu, who is one of the world’s leading concussion experts, told me he thought that there was an “undiagnosed epidemic” of brain injury-related pathology in ex-athletes. In other words, that a good deal of what we see and ascribe to a deficit in character or intelligence—criminal behavior, family breakdown, occupational failure—maybe just be the residual effects of on-field impacts.

QUESTION FROM MAX: Is it the injury that’s enjoyable, or the competition? The injury seems like a side effect, and not the object of interest. But perhaps this is naive, as I am not a sports fan.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Yes. Quite right. it’s the competition. But the problem with football is that the injury seems like an endemic feature of the competition—that is, that blocking and tackling, the cornerstones of the competitive game—may unavoidably involve impacts to the head.

QUESTION FROM MARCO: You are not the average football fan.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: If that’s a compliment, I’ll take it!

QUESTION FROM ROCO: Shouldn’t you be doing this chat with Bill Simmons? I’m sure he’s available and you take his game to another level. He’d eat up discussing how the N.F.L. would change if nobody could way over 250 pounds.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Simmons is too busy promoting his—and I’m not making this up—900 page book on the NBA. (By the way? You should buy it. It’s amazing). I actually think football is way better at that weight: it might open the game up a bit. I also wonder if maybe we could subtract a player from each side.

QUESTION FROM DAVE D: What about those who stil want their youth to play the sport. At the youth or even high school football level, is the amount and strength of contact acceptable you think compared to the college or pro level? I’m not a real advocate of the sport and don’t want my kids to play after reading this story but it certainly makes me wonder about the younger kids and if a bit of exposure to the roughness of the sport might be a good deterrent later?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I said this before, and it bears repeating. Until we know more—and we’re just uncovering the tip of this issue—I don’t think parents should let their kids play tackle football. Wait for the evidence to come in clearing the sport. it’s not as if there aren’t plenty of other sports that offer the same level of competitive challenge without the health risks.

QUESTION FROM KEVIN: Would a place like Green Bay turn into frozen meth town during the winters without pro football? Meth and cheese curds that is.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: We might need to re-introduce that other, great, northern competitive sport. Curling! :-) Adam Gopnik, my colleague, keeps threatening to do a major curling piece. I told him that I cannot wait.

QUESTION FROM GAMALIEL ORTIZ: You briefly suggested that we might put a cap in lineman’s weight. Can you tell us how this will reduce the levels of impact? Aren’t smaller players going to accelerate faster than bigger men to produce the same impact?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: I think the issue with weight reduction is to decrease the variability in player’s weights. So now, you have 350 pound players hitting 200 pound running backs. If the lineman was 250, it might make a difference. I say might, because I’m not sure how significant that difference would be.

QUESTION FROM JIM S: Full contact chess rules! :)

QUESTION FROM PK: Malcolm, do you know what a spoofer is?

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Nope. Am I one?

QUESTION FROM LEO: Wouldn’t the speed + space implied by the 250lb/10 player rule provide more ample opportunity for the sort of high impact collisions that cause immediate damage (as opposed to the lower impact discussed in the article)…consider the likes of a David Harris colliding with Ronnie Brown (230lbs, as most RBs are, not 200) on Monday night, without Jake Long & Co to impede his progress.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Excellent question. I don’t know. But can you see how hard the “reforming the game” argument is going to be? Every time someone comes up with one thing that might reduce brain impacts, it seems to raise another problem. My guess? Football slowly dies out… Anyway, that’s all folks! Thanks so much.

THE NEW YORKER: Thanks so much Malcolm! Thank you everyone for participating. Check newyorker.com on Monday for details about our next live chat.

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